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After a lot of head-scratching and brain storming, the guys at the Research Center for Photovoltaics at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) came up with a record-breaking flexible solar submodule. Using a CIGS thin film, a solar cell material, this monolithically integrated flexible solar cell submodule has the world’s highest photovoltaic energy conversion efficiency of 15.9%.

These types of solar modules are the heart-throb of solar technology, since unlike their paneled up counterparts, they can be easily fitted onto uneven surfaces. An energy conversion of more than 10% for these flexible solar submodules has never been attained before, due to which efficiency suffered. However, with this breakthrough, lightweight and flexible solar cell technology will find more uses and wider applications in future.

[NanoWerk]

Olha gente, eu me lembro de quando eu era criança, que haviam muitas carcaças de automóveis abandonadas pelas ruas aqui da cidade, e dava dó de ver os carros naquela situação. E nem eram carros super caros, eram modelos simples da época. E até hoje a sensação de dó que tenho é a mesma… A mesma sensação que tive ao ver esse Jaguar XJ220 na situação da foto acima.

Segundo o blog Crank and Piston, o carro estava apenas com 900 Km rodados no hodômetro e foi encontrado no Catar. Apesar de não haverem muitos detalhes sobre o que aconteceu com o carro, parece que ele foi vendido por uma concessionária da Jaguar em Dubai e a última vez que ele foi visto em bom estado foi há seis anos atrás, bonitinho e brilhando. Mas de alguma maneira, o carro apareceu largado, empoeirado e abandonado em alguma rua do Catar.

A pessoa que tirou as fotos, Mick Bramley, mantém um registro fotográfico dos carros que passam por suas mãos, e ele tinha uma foto do 220 em sua época de glória. Sua maior surpresa foi encontrar o mesmo carro nessa situação deprimente, e confirmar que era o mesmo que havia guardado em suas fotos (pois o modelo é o número 132 da série), com toda a sua beleza. Por que não me dão esse carro tomam alguma atitude e tiram o carro de lá?

Imagens do carro abandonado no Catar

Via | Piston Heads

The menu of education-related tax benefits has always been a varied one, with a wide selection of deductions, credits and exclusions, each with its own set of rules and phase-outs. This year a new item has been added — the American Opportunity Credit.

The AOC is an expansion of the Hope Credit. A college student who, at the beginning of the tax year, has not yet completed the first four years of post-secondary education (determined not by calendar year, but by the student’s status of freshman, sophmore, etc.), can get a credit of up to $2,500, of which $1,000 may be refundable.

The credit is 100% of the first $2,000 of qualified expenses and 25% of the next $2,000. In order to get the maximum credit you must have at least $4,000 in qualified expenses. As with the original Hope credit, the $2,500 maximum is per student and not per return. So if you have two kids in college at the same time you can get up to $5,000 from Uncle Sam.

In addition to tuition and fees you can also include required course materials, such as books, supplies and equipment, in the expenses available for the credit.

The phase-out range for the AOC is “modified” Adjusted Gross Income of between $80,000 and $90,000 for single taxpayers and $160,000 and $180,000 for joint filers. Many taxpayers who were denied tax benefits for their kids’ college costs in the past will be able to realize some savings on the 2009 Form 1040.

— Robert D. Flach

Consumerist has teamed up with MainStreet.com to bring you tax tips every day between now and April 15th. This frees up Tax Cat to do more important things — like trying to claim hairball meds and catnip as business expenses.

Looking for more deductions? You’ll find tons at MainStreet.com.

More from MainStreet.com:

• The Highest Taxes in the World
• The Craziest Tax Deductions Ever
• The Best Birthday Freebies

Found under: Android, Freeware, Diabetes, Track,

OnTrack is an application for Android owners which helps those of them who are diabetics to manage their diabetes by tracking various items such as glucose exercise food medication and weight.OnTrack Features – easy to use interface- supports mmol and mgdl- graphs and reports- export to CSVHTMLXML- set low and high glucose ranges Download OnTrack Diabetes

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Read more in mobile format

The summer sun burns with all its glory. So the Sunflower Corporation took advantage of it and came up with a basking-in-the-sun contraption, the Sundolier. This system compromising of a 2-axis reflector automatically tracks the sun and turns to the sunshine. That’s not all. It also combines a specially designed chandelier used for lighting up building interiors.

This indirect natural lighting system can illuminate 2,500 square feet of space. The Sundolier, a cost-effective and efficient system to lighten up your ballroom, may not be designed to be a building’s soul source of power, though if ever combined with a battery to store the generated power, it would work great throughout the day, and not just when the sun is shining bright.

[Ohgizmo]

Students and professors are curious about Apple’s new mobile computer, but will they find educational uses for it?

[Chronicle of Higher Education]

Strap the wrist charger ’round the skinniest part of your arm, and juice up your console, or other miniUSB-supporting device. The 1,500mAh Li-Ion battery won’t power you to level 47 but will get through a couple hours’ usage. More »

Content: Blur – Multiplayer Beta Demo
Price: Free
Availability: Not available in Asia
Dash Text: Blur Multiplayer Beta: Powered-Up Racing. Travel the globe to beat the best the streets have to offer. Utilize an armoury of Power-ups including huge bursts of energy, defensive shields, nitro speed boosts and mines to beat your rivals across the finish line. Blur features insane collisions, realistic damage, stunning racing environments, real world locations and licensed photo-realistic cars. The Multiplayer Beta features competitive gameplay for up to 20 racers, 6 tracks and different game modes. Download the demo.

 

 

Add the free Blur – Multiplayer Beta Demo to your Xbox 360 download queue

 

 

Pre-order Blur for the Xbox 360

Microsoft is throwing a party for the media, and it is widely speculated the guest of honor will be the two “Pink” phones the company has been rumored to be working on for a good while. The Pink phones are thought to be an internal project in Redmond being designed by the team that produced the endangered Sidekick phones. Microsoft bought Danger a few years ago and brought the Sidekick makers into the fold to work on a secret project. It is now expected the fruits of that secret project are going to be announced on April 12. What’s not clear is why would Microsoft want to do its own phone line.

The business model that Microsoft has used in the phone world is that of a platform builder and supplier to OEMs that actually make (and sell) the phones. Project Pink flies in the face of that and has long been thought to be “Sidekick-like phones” that Microsoft is going to sell under its own brand. That is a whole new business model, and it seems to this author that becoming a direct competitor to its phone partners in the Windows Mobile space would not be well received. Microsoft is aware of that and has publicly stated they will not make a Microsoft phone, so Pink is as unclear as ever, if that is indeed what will be announced.

The Pink phones are thought to be built for Microsoft by Sharp, a big player in the consumer electronics space. They are expected to capitalize on the strengths of the beleaguered Sidekick phones, and add social networking into the communication mix. The phones will most likely run an entirely new phone OS built by Microsoft’s Danger team. That may send a very nasty message to the smartphone makers — if Microsoft decides to compete with them and isn’t even comfortable enough with its upcoming Windows Phone 7 platform to use it for its own phones.

Image courtesy of Gizmodo

Related Content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d)

A never before used or implemented means to public transport, the Community Transit system designed by Dave Owsen lets you travel privately, in public. This private public transit system involves the use of private “Cells”. These Cells can accommodate two adults and two small children at a time. Using a monorail type rail system, these Cells cans be navigated using a touch screen interface through which commuters can select their preferred routes. It can also help transport goods from peer to peer, using containers instead of transport cells, allowing businesses to transport goods in a cheaper way.

So what powers the Community Transit? Solar energy! The Cells use an organic dye in their window material developed by the guys at MIT, that concentrate light to the surface edge, where it is captured and stored as electricity by the solar cells on the borders of the surface. With little chances of a gridlocked line, thanks to the two rail design that enables bypassing parked cells, this system will change the way we travel in future!

Via – [Designlaunches]

How do you like your porn stars? If you answered “fully clothed and on my phone,” have we got the apps for you! At least, that seems to be a bit of the theme from developer On The Go Girls, though with a name like that, what else are they going to do? Yesterday’s app drop brought seven new apps, four of adult film stars (and one of Hooters girls) wearing clothes of varying degrees of skimpy. Thankfully, that was offset by another enormous app drop (now I can’t help but read innuendo into everything I’m writing), hopefully designed to bring even more paid apps to our friends in countries that end with something other than “merica.” The list, in all it’s glory, is waiting for you after the jump.

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The following games are now available for direct download from Xbox LIVE: 

Content: FABLE II
Price: Check pricing for your region
Availability: All Xbox LIVE regions except Japan
Dash Text: (Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB) Download the manual for this game by locating the game on http://marketplace.xbox.com and selecting “See Game Manual". Download the manual for this game by locating the game on http://marketplace.xbox.com and selecting “See Game Manual". Download Fable II, the best-selling action role-playing game, in which you take on the role of a Hero in the fully realized land of Albion. Play through an epic story, become the world’s greatest fighter, gunslinger or mage. Explore dozens of open, unique environments with your faithful

 
Add Fable II to your Xbox 360 download queue

Content: Fallout 3
Price: Check pricing for your region
Availability: Europe, Australia, and New Zealand
Dash Text: (Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB) This game supports English. Download the manual for this game by locating the game on http://marketplace.xbox.com and selecting “See Game Manual". Vault-Tec engineers have worked around the clock on an interactive reproduction of Wasteland life for you to enjoy from the comfort of your own vault. Fallout 3 includes an expansive world, unique combat, shockingly realistic visuals, tons of player choice, and an incredible cast of dynamic characters. Every minute is a fight for survival against the terrors of the outside world – radiation, Super Mutants, and hostile mutated creatures. From Vault-Tec®, America’s First Choice in Post-Nuclear Simulation™. There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

 

Add Fallout 3 to your Xbox 360 download queue

New Findings from Semester-Long Study on iPhone Integration in the College Classroom Reveals Increased Motivation and Learning Among Students. Partnership Between ‘GetYa Learn On’ and Abilene Christian University Provides Unique Findings and Valuable Insight for Future Software Development, Including E-Textbooks for the iPad.

[Source: PRNewswire]

Last November, we reported that the Cerda Family listed their Extreme Makeover home in Las Vegas for $500k. Well, the Cerda home recently sold — for $317k. Although this article says they originally listed it for $330K, it clearly was listed as high as $600k at one time. This sale turned out to be a nice home and a nice “deal” for someone.

> See more Centennial Hills real estate

> See Las Vegas home values

Whitney Houston has postponed a concert in Paris after falling ill.

The legendary singer had been due to perform in the City of Lights this week, but a statement released by her representative says an upper respiratory infection has forced Whitney to bow out of that show on doctors’ orders.

Concert organizers say the 46-year-old singer had been excited about opening her European tour at Paris’ Omnisport Bercy on Tuesday night and regretted having to postpone the show. The illness will delay the European leg of a world tour that has been rocked by fan criticism in Asia and Australia.

“Whitney is suffering from an upper respiratory infection and after a consultation with her doctors has been advised to postpone her performance,” said a statement from the concert’s organizers. “Whitney and her band apologize that the show has to be rescheduled on such short notice.”

Whitney’s “Nothing But Love Tour” will resume as scheduled in Manchester, Britain, on April 8 and a new date for Paris will be announced shortly.

CNN manufactured a trend story about young professionals hiding their Facebook statuses so snooping prospective employees can’t find anything to eliminate them from job consideration. The story is based on a Microsoft survey that finds hiring managers use the site to dig for dirt on applicants.

From the story:

A recent survey commissioned by Microsoft found that 70 percent of recruiters and hiring managers in the United States have rejected an applicant based on information they found online.

What kind of information? “Inappropriate” comments by the candidate; “unsuitable” photos and videos; criticisms of previous employers, co-workers, or clients; and even inappropriate comments by friends and relatives, according to the survey report, titled “Online Reputation in a Connected World.”

How do your Facebook privacy settings play into your professional life?

Young job-seekers hiding their Facebook pages [CNN]
(Thanks, Chris!)

Postponing the ruling on whether China is a “currency manipulator”, which had been due on April 15th, makes sense. China’s currency policy is misguided, and it does hurt the US. But a mechanical ratcheting up of pressure to deploy trade sanctions is unlikely to solve the problem. This path is also very risky–and not just so far as economic policy is concerned. In this new column for the Financial Times I argue for a safer and, I think, more productive approach.

Article Tags: Philip Foster

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Want to know what happens when you increase the liability of third parties for copyright infringement? Stories of shops refusing to print digital photos. We’ve seen it for a while in the US. Five years ago we had stories of photoshops in the US refusing to make prints on photos because of the assumption that they must infringe on someone’s copyrights. Wal-Mart got caught up in the story a few years back when an employee made some clueless statements about copyright in refusing to make prints of certain images — and there was a repeat story just a few months ago.

It appears that a similar story is playing itself out across the pond in the UK, where the popular retailer Boots apparently refused to print one woman’s photos because they were seen as “too good” for her to have taken, and therefore must be infringing on someone’s copyrights (thanks to Dave Michels for sending this in). The woman even got a signed letter, and when that didn’t work, came back with the (pregnant) woman who was in the photos to let the staff know that these photos were, indeed, legit and not covered by someone else’s copyright. The store still said no.

And, of course, this sort of thing only becomes as bigger and bigger issue as amateur photographers improve. Of course, it’s easy to put the blame on Boots or the employees here for being over-zealous (or, as Boots put it, “over-cautious”), but the real issue is what we’ve turned copyright law into these days, where people are taught to fear being involved in anything that might possibly infringe, as it may lead to lawsuits or a loss of an internet connection or whatever. As copyright laws get more ridiculous, we’re teaching people to not move forward if they don’t know for sure — and that can create a massive stifling of creativity and expression.

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